The Open Gaming Alliance (OGA) will release its seventh annual research report at the end of March in conjunction with market research firm DFC Intelligence. The new report, which focuses on the PC gaming sector, offers predictions on the sector from the end of 2014 up until 2018.

The very first bit of data from research firm SuperData's new initiative to cover digital game sales shows that games from Activision and Take-Two Interactive have made the most money in the digital landscape during the month of January.

MCV has an interesting report on the shifting attitudes of the media and game developers towards review aggregation site Metacritic. Eurogamer, which recently eliminated reviews scores altogether from its reviews earlier this month, thinks the biggest problem with Metacritic is how certain parts of the industry use metascores to approve or deny developer bonuses, among other issues.

If you believe a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics, Sony will move 80 million PS4 systems globally by 2019, compared to Microsoft's 57 million Xbox One systems. The prediction is part of the group's new "Connected Home Devices Report," which proclaims that the PlayStation 4 "is on path to reproduce the success of the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii."

Techland's zombie survival game Dying Light was the most sold game at retail in United States during the month of January, according to retail research firm NPD Group. The game, published by Warner Bros. Interactive in the United States is available for Xbox One, PC, and PS4. It managed to beat out Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Grand Theft Auto V and Minecraft, according to NPD Group's data for the month.

Late last week Steam officially made its inventory system available to all game developers on Steam via a freshly released Steamworks SDK update. The Steam Inventory System - popularized by Valve's games like Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 - is a "set of new Steamworks APIs and tools that allow a game to enable persistent items that have been purchase or unlocked by individual users without having to run special servers to keep track of these user's inventory." In other words, you can enable community sales of virtual items for your games if you are a game developer.

Last night Take-Two Interactive revealed that - to no one's surprise - that wholly owned studio Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V has now reached 45 million unit sales since its launch. Take-Two also revealed that around 10 million of those sales come from PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sales, with the rest coming from the last generation PS3 and Xbox 360. The PC version is currently in development and is set for a release in March after a delay in January.

One year after release, Octodad: Dadliest Catch developer Young Horses reveals that its strange game about an octopus posing as a human being has managed to make $4.9 million dollars. That number covers up until January 30, the developer revealed in an extensive infographic it shared via Twitter. That infographic shows that it took the nine-person development team around 31 months to develop at 21 hours of work per week.

A Hawaiian court has sided with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against a former executive from religious-themed video games publisher Left Behind Games, according to an Accounting Today report (as reported by Blue's News) detailing the particulars of the case.

A top New York State Senator admits that lawmakers are not doing enough to attract the video game and tech industries to the Empire State, but will make it his top priority in 2015. New York State Senator Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn) believes other states and parts of Canada are beating New York State in attracting gaming and biotech companies.

Hyrule Warriors for Wii U has shipped one million units worldwide to-date according to Nintendo. "Shipped" is not the same as "sold through" to customers, but it shows that retailers are committed to the game and see it as a bonafide hit. The Wii U Legend of Zelda spinoff from Nintendo and Koei Tecmo combines two popular franchises into one game - Zelda and Dynasty Warriors. The game launched last fall.

Microsoft sold 6.6 million Xbox systems in the final three months of 2014, the company revealed this week as part of its FY15 Q2 earnings report, which covers the quarter ended December 31, 2014. We say "Xbox systems" because Microsoft combined sales of both Xbox 360 and Xbox One during that time period in its financials.

Microsoft also said its Xbox business enjoyed a "strong holiday season", while the Devices and Consumer division saw year-over-year revenue growth of 8 percent to $12.9 billion.

Sony announced today that it plans to delay its first quarter earnings by a month in the wake of its latest security breach at the hands of a hacking group. The company was hacked and had data stolen at the hands of a group called the Guardians of Peace. The hack was supposedly in response to Sony Pictures' plan to release the James Franco and Seth Rogan comedy The Interview.

According to new data from analyst firm Kantar Worldpanel (as reported on by MCV), Amazon dominated Christmas entertainment sales in the United Kingdom. For the 12 week period that ended on December 21, one in four pounds spent on video games, physical music and video content in the UK went to Amazon. Ultimately the retailer claimed a 25.6 percent share of the market during the UK holiday season.

Consumers in Europe can now get a "no questions asked" refund on purchases they don't like through Apple's App Store. The company quietly changed its policy on refunds in Europe, making it a lot easier for those who want their money back on purchases of apps and music less than 14 days old.

Apple could have taken a stricter stance on this new policy because the law would allow the company to deny refunds on products that have been used; listening to a song, for example would mean that you enjoyed and used the product.

Video game accessories maker Mad Catz has cut the price of its Android-powered Mojo micro-console again. The company released its console in December of 2013 at a price point of around $250, but in March it hacked $50 off the price bringing it down to a more reasonable $200. Now with even more competition announced at CES in early January (Razer announced it was working on a micro-console called Forge TV at an even lower price point of $100), Mad Catz has decided to cut the price of its system even more.

Update #2: Microsoft has confirmed with Polygon that the return to the $349 price is not "permanent," but the company did not say how long this promotion would last.

Update #1: There is some debate on whether this is a temporary promotion similar to what Microsoft did over the holiday shopping season or a permanent move to the $349 pricing model. We'll have more info on that when it becomes available.

Episodic adventure game developer and publisher Telltale Games has a new chief executive officer this week. Telltale Games president and CTO Kevin Bruner has been promoted to the role of CEO, the company announced today. Bruner is taking over the role from Dan Connors, who will now serve as an executive advisor to the company moving forward.

In addition to revealing his promotion, Bruner said that the Game of Thrones, Minecraft, and The Walking Dead adventure game series developer is currently working with new partners on several unannounced projects, and its own original IP.

The Japanese games market recorded a deficit of ten percent in 2014 compared to 2013, according to new data released by Famitsu (as detailed by MCV). The data also shows that Nintendo's popular 3DS hand-held beat out all other gaming hardware in the region during the year. The Japanese market reached ¥368.55bn in 2014, down from 2013’s final tally of ¥408.97bn.

Sony announced this week that the PlayStation 4 has sold more than 18.5 million units worldwide since its launch in November of 2013. The new figures tabulate units sold as of January 4, 2015. Sony also said that during the critical holiday shopping season (late November to early January) it managed to sell 4.1 million units worldwide.

Perfect World may decide to become a privately owned company in 2015, according to this GII report. The company is considering going private in 2015 because a proposal put forth by Michael Yufeng Chi, Perfect World founder and current chairman of the board.

Games Industry International offers an interesting article on 2015 predictions about the video games industry from four of the most prominent analysts covering the sector including Michael Pachter from Wedbush Securities, independent analyst Billy Pidgeon, David Cole from DFC Intelligence, and Patrick Walker from EEDAR.

There's a lot to unpack in this article, but here's a brief overview of the predictions from each analyst:

Games are an important part of video rental kiosk company Redbox, which is why the company has brought in a seasoned pro from the video games industry to spearhead efforts in that department. Redbox announced today that it has appointed former Codemasters executive Bill West as vice president of video games. West spent nine and a half years at Codemasters as general manager for the Americas and as VP of corporate strategy. Prior to working at Codemasters, West worked with Climax Group, Acclaim Entertainment, The Jim Henson Company, and The Walt Disney Company.

Troubled New Jersey-based publisher Majesco has managed to drum up a $6 million dollar investment as part of a deal that required the resignation of two high-ranking Majesco executives from the company's Board of Directors: chairman Allan Grafman and Majesco CEO Jesse Sutton.

Puerto Rico has implemented a tax incentive plan which gives a 40 percent tax credit on salaries and production costs on projects with budgets of $100,000 or higher, and the first company to take advantage of it is Juan-based Space Rhino Games. The company is currently hard at work on Breach TD, a tower defense game that was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign in June.

Nintendo announced that the releases of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, and Amiibo on November 21 are already smashing successes. In fact the company has put these products as some of the best-selling properties in 2014.

Together Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire sold nearly 1.5 million copies during their first ten days of availability in the US at retail and through digital channels. Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire have performed even better in Japan, with 1.5 million copies sold in just three days.

The PlayStation 4 has been outselling the Xbox One since February, but it looks like Microsoft might have finally broken that streak in the month of November - according to this Ars Technica report. Microsoft announced that the NPD retail sales data shows the Xbox One outsold the PS4 in both the US and the UK.

It looks like this year's Call of Duty is not faring as well as last year's Call of Duty, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson - as reported by Street Insider. Olson said the NPD Group's November US retail sales of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare were down 27 percent compared to last year's Call of Duty: Ghosts.

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm